“There are only three things that matter when negotiating: achieving a good and fair result, not killing your personal relationship getting there, and understanding the deal that you are striking.” - Brad Feld (from Venture Deals book)
A good negotiation therefore is a negotiation that does not kill personal relationships and different parties incentives while getting to the deal.
But what does it mean in practice? And how can first time founders reach this goal?
I believe that proper negotiation requires three elements:
The process of setting up Intellectual Property Licenses, Shareholder agreements, term-sheets, and equity sales documents, usually at the same time and pretty fast(!) can be particularly complicated if you do not have an idea of what to expect.
And setting up properly these documents is as important as writing a good business plan, since bad contracts can screw up your company and making it instantaneously unattractive from day 0 to future investors.
This section was created to try to guide you in this complicate endeavor, collecting best practices and standard terms from different regions to provide you an overview of what is done in top institutions.
<aside> ⚠️ Warning: these documents and guides must be used only as references to learn about these topics. Always refer to your tech transfer office, your incubator, and to professional startup lawyers for better explanations and possible trade-offs, and talk to other founders who have recently negotiated with the same organizations you are dealing with.
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